Recent article on how to raise a douchebag/douchebaguette:
[http://www.details.com/sex-relationships/marriage-and-kids/200711/are-you-raising-a-douchebag?currentPage=3](Are you raising a douchebag?)
Setting limits is key. Kids need parents, not adults who just want to be buddies.
Yeah, I thought she was talking about situations where people pay lip service to “teaching the value of a dollar and hard work” but are really just involved in their own concerns and emotionally distant and not really engaged with the kids.
I think what happens is that we are always in a cycle. We notice a problem with over-entitled kids, based on their parents being too indulgent. The response osto start being less indulgent. Some switch right away, others take their time through generations, but, eventually, both wind up on the other end: kids lacking any sense of worth because their parents neglect them. And so the response is to be less neglectful, a trend that ends up with over-entitled kids, based on their kids being indulgent. The response is… You get the idea.
It seems we can never find that middle ground and stick to it. We always notice the slight deviations, no matter how close we are to keeping it perfectly balanced. The real problem is that we tend to blame every problem with kids on how they are raised, instead of realizing that there is no way to guarantee that the way you raise a kid that will ensure they become a perfect citizen.
The authors of this book - The Narcissism Epidemic: Living In the Age of Entitlement" agree with the OP. Giving your children everything they want and telling them they’re special for doing nothing doesn’t give them the tools to live in the adult world where people won’t tell them they’re special just for being alive. A common misconception is that it is important for kids to have high self-esteem; it turns out that high self-esteem based on nothing makes people dissatisfied and unpleasant to be around. People with lower self-esteem are actually happier because they learn to live with what life hands them; they don’t expect to become America’s next American Idol winner in spite of their lack of singing ability (which they think is great, because they’ve been told all their lives that they are wonderful singers).
What actually does increase happiness, satisfaction, and the ability to get along with others is esteem based on achievement (I think a Doper recently called it self-efficacy).
Very well said. I cannot disagree, especially since your anecdotals trump mine in terms of real life experience.
Also agree. Setting limits is a primary function of reining in adolescents, in my view. But be consistent about it and talk to them about it, if possible.
I misread upon re-reading. I see the light now.
I agree with this, but recognize that those spoiled children are going to grow up thinking that they deserve every little thing, and at least half of them are going to get nothing of the sort. Inevitably some of them are going to cross the wrong person and get the taste slapped out of their mouth. Others will always be failures without someone to indulge them. So, while the parents are not abusing their children, they are setting them up to be abused as adults. Is emotionally crippling and physically incapacitating people not just a different type of abuse?
As I have no kids, so on one hand I don’t have a horse in this race. But on the other hand, I can more clearly evaluate how kids I know are being raised. The current “everybody gets an award!” bullshit doesn’t challenge kids to do their best - win or lose, you get a shitty gold-plated plastic trophy. On the other hand, I’ve seen kids work harder when they know that another kid is doing better. If your in the handful of the best, you get a reward. You’re not, you don’t.
I think it’s more that parents can either build or warp.
The other real problem is that the middle ground is no place to stand. Perhaps Quakers 200 years ago could raise children with that kind of moderation and carefulness. I say life today is just too fraught with complications and conflicts and just plain information.
People who truly love their kids usually aren’t going to be able to raise them on the middle ground. They’re always going to be indulgent or forbidding - or both, by turns. And of course, people who don’t love their kids aren’t even going to try.
Dammit Manda JO, this is the Pit! This is no place for thoughtful, nuanced analysis based on one’s own extensive personal experiences. Either get on board with the over-generalized, spittle-flecked invective or get out! 
"Why can’t they be like we were,
perfect in every way?
What’s the matter with kids today?"
I agree with the OP 23.6%. I do think children need to learn to handle frustrations and difficulties. And I do think they need something to look forward to when they grow up: that being an adult has to have some privileges and advantages over being a kid.
But I don’t know how many children actually are being padded and shielded nowadays, nor how this compares to the past. And I don’t want children being embittered, knocked around, or deprived, either.
An even more common misconception is the belief that self-esteem is somehow a bad thing. It’s gotten a bad rep over the past couple of decades because people think it means entitlement. And that’s just not true. It’s people with true self-esteem that can be happiest with whatever life hands them. I think the term you’re looking for here is not “self-esteem” but “spoiled brat.”
Having said that, it does seem that we’ve raised a generation of people who like to feel superior to “these kids today.” Yet again.
It’s complicated by the fact that the golden mean is in different places for kids with different personalities. There’s no guarantee that it will be in the same place for siblings, either. What’s just right for one kid might be too indulgent for a sibling. What builds one kid’s character might warp their sibling’s.
This is an ugly truth to a lot of people.
I have to agree with Manda Jo. I recently put three kids through high school,my youngest is a freshman in college. The kids my children hang out with are a ton nicer and better than my peers were in high school.
These kids jump in and put on fund raisers to help kids in their class that have fallen on hard times. They participate in functions whole heartedly.
When I was in high school, that just wasn’t done. We were too detached and ironic to care. And God forbid we would do anything in conjunction with “the man” and work along side teachers and administrators. The perfect illustration of what we thought was cool was the Chevy Chase character in Caddy Shack. That was the ultimate in cool when that movie came out. When I saw that movie recently, his character just struck me as being an asshole.
Several of my kid’s friends had hyper-involved, helicopter parents. They still turned out OK. The one friend of my oldest who had the most extreme parent [a person who devoted 3 solid years to getting a middle school math teacher fired because he was mean to her kid] is breaking into the broadcast business and is now on air on the weekends in a small midwest market. She’s experienced a lot of rejection to even get that far, and as near as I can tell she’s just grateful for her one break.
That was me. Is me. Was and is me. Except that I’m early Gen X.
And as one of those parents who waited almost too long to have a child (mostly due to medical issues) and who now has a very happy toddler, I am more than aware of the need to balance out the building of good self-esteem (which my own parents failed spectacularly to do) with overdoing it and raising a spoiled overprotective brat. As best as I can plan it, the idea is to make sure she develops a healthy sense of self-worth without being overindulged early on, and then give her increasing responsibility as she gets older to keep her from thinking that everything will be provided for free. It’s a very fine line to walk.
I’m probably kidding myself here though - we’ll undoubtedly traumatize her somehow and end up with a sociopath.
See? No self-esteem.
I think you/they/somebody needs to split up self esteem so to speak.
There is the self esteem that everybody has inherent worth as human being. Perhaps some folks are more worthy or less worthy to some extent based upon their character, but the honest hard working janitor is just as worthy a human as the super smart honest hard working billionaire. Teaching kids that seems pretty reasonable.
On the OTHER HAND, working hard to be your best or actually being better at something than someone else IS a goal worthy of recognition because it benifits the person doing it as well as society at large (and therefore even the people that fall short of the best). You can’t validate that concept if everyone gets 1st places or always passes.
I think the two get conflated much to often.
I don’t know about parents attending ball games, or providing material things, but in my neighborhood, almost all kids are being padded and shielded from the Big Bad Bus Stop.
When I was a kid, I walked that eighth of a mile to catch the bus. Now, no kids are standing at the corner for the bus. They’ve all been driven to the corner and are all waiting inside a clot of double-parked cars for the bus to arrive. It’s so bad that the city should consider building a “kiss-and-ride” lot so these people don’t cause a traffic hazard.
In my neighborhood the bus stops at everyone’s house. Even if they are only two houses apart.
In my neighborhood, this neatly divides by the public school parents and the private school parents.
The public school parents generally take their kids out when the kids are very little - and maybe when it is very very cold.
The private school parents drive their kids to the end of the very short cul de sac when they are twelve and wait with them in the car. Then pick them up in the car and drive them four houses home at the end of the day.
The private school parents are sure that every adult they don’t know wants to diddle their kid. The public school parents are the ones that let their ten and eleven year old kids run feral all summer because they are old enough not to kill themselves while the parents are off at work.